


Glory

by GoThruTheStars



Series: No Better Love [2]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: But also, Geno's trying to fix things and thats what matters, M/M, MAYBE!, Not, Ovi is mentioned, another 2k of angst, bitch you thot, geno's side of the story, its certainly possible!, not me apparently, part three will be happier!, part two means no conclusions, sorrynotsorry, who needs to pass college anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-08-06 16:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16391330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoThruTheStars/pseuds/GoThruTheStars
Summary: It’s Thursday, and Sid is crying.He doesn’t know Geno is standing there - he certainly wouldn’t be crying if he did, and G aches horribly for the days when he was the only one who Sid would let see him pain (and by God, all the pain that their Captain hid, it was breathtaking, and Geno always tried to do his best to help ease it).(Maybe that’s why this is so hard, now, because he knows, he knows what Sid goes through, and he can do nothing).





	Glory

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

_ For all the moments never known _

_ 'Cause he stepped off of the tallest sail _

_ For all the love he'd left below _

_ In the waves _

 

_ They found a letter that he wrote _

_ He said "it's best off if we burn the page" _

 

_ I guess I'm tired of talk of hope _

_ I've learned that doves and ravens fly the same  _

  
\---------

It’s Thursday, and Sid is crying.

 

He doesn’t know Geno is standing there - he certainly wouldn’t be crying if he did, and G aches horribly for the days when he was the only one who Sid would let see him pain (and by God, all the pain that their Captain hid, it was breathtaking, and Geno always tried to do his best to help ease it).

 

(Maybe that’s why this is so hard, now, because he _knows,_ he knows what Sid goes through, and he can do _nothing)._

 

Still. They have practice in an hour. The guys will be coming in soon.

 

He back out of the room on silent feet, intentionally slams a door in the hallway and pretends that it doesn’t rip apart his soul as he walks away.

 

....

 

It horribly ironic, in the way that they fell apart, because it’s the same way they fell together.

 

That second cup. The race for it combined with getting a playoffs spot - Geno remembers, walking into Sidney's hotel room after they won, and before Sid could get out two words, he kissed him.

 

He loved him. So, so much. 

 

They won the first cup together, but they won the second  _ together _ , and they won a third, and then-

 

Then-

 

Geno sent Ovi a congratulatory text, and he got himself drunk off a two hundred dollar bottle of vodka.

 

He never talked to Sid.

 

....

 

He doesn’t know what started it. 

 

All those stupid romcoms that Sid got him hooked on, even though he doesn’t understand ninety percent of the plot, they make it seem like people are just always happy once they get together. And sure - after he kissed Sid, and after Sid kissed back, and after some pretty spectacular sex, Geno felt like there could never mess it up.

 

Which was completely unrealistic, he found out later, but it was okay. They fought. Often. It was inevitable, because they’re both playing for the same team, and they lose at the same time, and they’re both so stupidly stubborn, and it’s - it was hard, at first. But they worked at it, and they figured it out (Sid needed space after a game, win or lose, and Geno needed noise, so Sid got some noise canceling headphones and a Spotify, and Geno got Netflix and the ability to scream out loud if he so choose).

 

It worked. Right up until it didn’t.

 

He doesn’t know what started it, but they just...pulled away. So much pressure to do better, be the best, three cups in a row, it was  _ there _ , but Sid was tired, and Geno could see it.

 

He wasn’t the only one, but everyone else didn’t have the ability to help like he did. They didn’t have a front row seat to watching the season destroy Sidney, they didn’t go home to see the strong, talented, courageous captain crumble into an exhausted, self-deprecating, defeated shell of himself. They didn’t see it, because Sid didn’t let them, but he let Geno, and what did he do?

 

Nothing.

 

Geno did nothing, when it mattered, and too much when it didn’t, and they started fighting, and fighting, and fighting, and it wasn’t because they didn’t have problems - they  _ did _ , but it - the fights were not over those problems, they were over meaningless shit. 

 

And - while he’s being honest here - it was just one big problem.

 

Fear.

 

Evgeni was fucking  _ scared _ . He was terrified, because he was watching the man he loved crumble, and he had no idea how to help, he didn’t know when to step in, he didn’t know why this year was so much different than all the others. He only ever wanted what’s best for Sid. 

 

He only ever wanted Sid to be happy.

 

Even when they weren’t together, when he just had an A, not Sidney’s heart, he did his best to make Sid  _ smile _ . He reminded him -  _ there’s more to life than this _ . He always worried, (and again, he  wasn’t - _ isn’t  _ the only one who does), that Sid was going to lose himself in this. He fucking understands needing to play, and he understands how much hockey means to Sid because it means the same to him too. 

 

He can look beyond it though. And while he knows, that Sid knows, that hockey won’t be forever, he thinks that sometimes Sidney gets to invested in that idea. Like Sid only ever sees the end of the ride, and puts  _ too much  _ into the right now. 

 

_ “Have to remember to live Sid.” _

 

_ “I’m trying, G, I’m trying.” _

 

.....

 

They fought and fought until they couldn’t fight anymore, and the day before the series against the Caps, Geno woke to cold sheets. Again.

 

It was a Thursday. They had practice at noon.

 

Sidney was sitting at the kitchen table, at five in the morning, with his head in his hands and dried tears on his face.

 

That was it. It wasn’t messy or angry. It wasn’t dramatic like all those shows told him it would be. 

 

It was Sid saying “ _ we shouldn’t do this anymore” _ and Zhenya saying “ _ okay.” _

 

It was heartbreak, and it was resignation, and it was disappointment. 

 

It was everything he thought they should have had, and it was gone, just like that.

 

....

 

In June, when the Capitals raised the cup, and Geno was systematically getting drunk, he did, actually feel angry. But it wasn’t anger towards Sid (this was just as much Zhenya’s fault as it was his) or at Ovi (Sasha deserved this, he did) or anything logical like that (this breakup was anything but logical, but then, their relationship had always been just as irrational).

 

It was that - everything he wanted to happen, everything that had already happened - everything that they  _ were _ was  _ gone _ just like that.

 

Six fucking words. And the love of his life was gone.

 

They were worth more than that. (They’re worth more than stupid fights and slammed doors, worth more than badly written daytime TV plot, worth  _ more  _ than tears at five AM and splitting houses like it never even happened).

 

They’re worth more than six words.

 

....

 

He goes home for the summer. He sees his friends and spends time with his family, and he doesn’t talk to Sidney once.

 

His parents don’t say a word, which tells him they think he fucked up royally, and they’re probably right, since last summer he was on his phone all the time, sending Sid silly pictures and chirps and calling him when the time zones matched up and it’s so different, so different from last summer. 

 

He was happy, last summer. He was so, so blissfully happy.

 

It there was a step below “disgusting all-consuming sorrow and heartache”, that’s probably where he is for this one.

 

....

 

He comes back to Pittsburgh, and it feels like there’s a gaping hole in his chest that everyone can see. But if he thought he was bad (if the hot sleepless nights and the excessive amount of alcohol and the blank emptiness were bad) then Sidney is catastrophic.  

 

He didn’t think he was helping, just being there to hold Sid through it all, but it must’ve done something, his general existence, because, without it, Sid is...not Sid.

 

He doesn’t smile.

 

At all.

 

....

 

_ “Explain this to me one more time.” _ Flower hisses over the phone, and Geno flinches even though he’s alone in his house and Marc-Andre is several thousand miles away. “ _ Because it sounds like you did all the things I specifically remember telling you NOT to do when you first started dating.” _

 

“I’m not call to have you yell at me Flower-”

 

_ “No, you definitely did, because otherwise, you wouldn’t have called at all.” _ Geno sighs. It’s too late for this shit.

 

“Need to help him Flower. You not here, you don’t see-” He has to bite back a wince at his careless words. The expansion is still sore for some people. (Still so sore for Sid, who sits alone on the plane, over a year later, an ever present reminder that Sid is alone now, and it’s Geno’s fault).

 

There’s a pause. Geno’s known Fleury long enough to realize that pause is Flowers way not screaming in French over the phone. 

 

Literally. Flower is like Geno - get angry and English flies out the window, so he’s mostly just trying to sort around in his brain for the right words, and once he gets them-

 

“ _ How fucking dare you.” _ He snarls (Marc-Andre Fleury is the human embodiment of a cinnamon roll on most days, but god forbid you see him truly angry, because it’s a terrifying thing, and Evgeni is not afraid to say so). 

 

“ _ You think I wouldn’t be there if I could?! You think I don’t want to fix this, that I don’t want to see Sid happy? I was there for him during the pining years, you fucking asshole, I know what he’s like and I know how he gets and I know that if you keep letting him be like this it's going to really kill him. Do you understand that? This is going to get worse unless you do something - personally, I’d recommend pulling your head out of your ass, that normally works.” _

 

Geno sighs and scrubs his face with the hand not holding the phone. “Sid did not want us to be us anymore.”

 

“ _ If you really believe that then you didn’t deserve him in the first place.” _ And with that the former Penguin hangs up the phone, leaving Geno more confused than before and a little afraid the goalie is going to show up at his door the next morning.

 

Geno doesn’t wake up to an angry mob of French Canadians at his door the next morning, despite the fact that their conversation definitely has made it through the circuit by now, but he does wake up with a realization.

 

He wakes up with hope.

 

....

 

Zhenya is used to being hurt. He’s used to living with pain, and so it’s with great guilt that he finds himself smiling, and laughing, and being semi-normal every once in a while. While he does it, he may feel like a hollow, empty, aching shell, but it convinces other people that he’s okay. 

 

But Sid’s wall’s are broken and crumbling, ash and dust in the air around him, and it’s visible to just about anyone who knows him on a first name basis (media and others excluded). It affects him in every way it can, and for the first time since they started playing together, their relationship affects how Sid plays too.

 

How could people not notice though, when Sidney looks exhausted, despite it being the beginning of the season, when he’s pale despite the summer, when he looks dazed and sick, even though the trainers have seen him a dozen times and can find nothing wrong. The A’s work their asses off to try and help him, and Geno feels a dull pang of pride with the way his team works to stay together and help their Captain.

 

It would go a long way if Geno didn’t know the way Sidney thinks. It would be better, if Geno didn’t know that every time Sidney looked at him, he was hurt all over again. 

 

It would be better, maybe, if they’d never been together at all, because then Geno wouldn’t be sitting on the other side of a locker room, listening to the team laugh and joke, while watching his Captain hide in the corner stall, and not be able to say anything.

 

Or maybe it would be much, much worse.

 

....

 

“Oh so  _ now  _ you care?”

 

“Shut up.” Geno snaps. He’s tired of hearing that (It was the same thing that Duper and Kuni and Flower had said, after the later stopped being too angry to speak to him). “I’m never stop caring.” 

 

Tanger shrugs, and continues getting dressed. “That’s not what I’ve heard, but okay, you tell yourself whatever.”

 

“ _ Kris.” _ Geno says. Tanger keeps getting dressed with a refined air of indifference that Geno knows is fake.

 

The reality is that Letang is furious. And he’s just as worried as Geno is. Zhenya is counting on that second one to come before the former, because if it doesn’t, well, then he’s up shit creek.

 

“What do you want,  _ Malkin _ ?” Tanger snaps back, and his tone could freeze water it’s so cold.

 

“Told you-”

 

“No, yeah, I got that you suddenly have decided you don’t want Sidney to be hurt, but since that’s never stopped you before, I’d expect you to have no problem moving on right?”

 

Geno stands there, frozen for a few seconds while the guys trickle into the locker room for practice.

 

That morning, he walked into the arena, and Sidney was sitting in the locker room, alone, jersey in hand, fingers tracing over the C. 

 

Geno almost threw up, because he knows Sid.  _ He  _ knows him, like no one else does.

 

He knows that Sid is thinking about it. About giving it up. About  _ giving up _ .

 

“I’m think Sid going do something stupid.”

 

Tanger jerks his head up, eyes sharper than the blades on his feet as he looks at Geno for the first time since the start of their conversation. 

 

“Geno-”

 

“No, I’m- I’m know, is my fault. Can’t just go back, Tanger, not as easy. I’m need your help.”

 

Kris blinks, and his gaze slides to the left a little, looking at something over Zhenya’s shoulder. His face falls a little, the anger bleeding away to worry. 

 

“Okay G. Okay.”

 

.....

 

_ “Why did you really break up with him Zhenya?” _

 

_ “I didn’t break up with him Sasha, he broke up with me.” _

 

_ “Not really, but while you’re lying to yourself, we can go with that. Still, you let him. Why? Two years Zhenya, I’ve never seen you happier. Both of you. You don’t just end that, something had to happen.” _

 

_ “I told you what happened.” _

 

_ “And it’s bullshit. So if nothing horrible happened, tell me, why did you really break up?” _

 

_ “You keep asking the same thing, still doesn’t make sense-” _

 

_ “Did you break up with him because you wanted to, or because you thought it was what was best for Sid, and Zhenya, if it’s the latter, I’m going to beat your face into the boards the next time I see you, and I’ll do it on Sid’s behalf.” _

 

.....

 

It’s Thursday, and Sid’s not at the rink.

 

Yesterday, that fact was weird, and concerning, but not so much to the point that it is today.

 

Yesterday, was an optional skate. Yesterday, Sidney could’ve excused with a personal obligation, a media commitment, any excuse really, because the team would’ve been so desperate to hear that their Captain wasn’t as broken as they all thought, that they would’ve taken anything as a reason for him not to be there.

 

Today is practice. The mandatory kind. The kind that no player misses unless they’re on Injury or they’ve up and decided they don’t want to play the next game.

 

Today is practice, and it’s quiet and subdued and tense, and if anyone wasn’t aware something was wrong with Sid, well, they’re certainly in the loop now. The ones who knew - the ones who’ve been around for so long, the ones who have been watching, but not knowing what to do - they’re scared now too. They’re all scared, because Sid  _ isn’t at practice _ , and maybe-

 

Maybe they really missed something.

 

He sees it as he skates, the way everyone's eyes are not looking at the ice or the puck or the goal, but at the past, the instances where they could’ve spoken up, where they could’ve asked Sid “ _ are you okay _ ”, “ _ did something happen _ ”, “ _ can I help you _ ”,  _ “can we please just talk Sid-” _ .

 

They cut it short, even though there’s game tomorrow night. Sully doesn’t even say anything to Geno after, he just gives him a look in the hallway, and Geno nods. 

 

He can fix this.

 

He just really hopes it isn’t too late.

**Author's Note:**

> I mean technically it's a part two, as it is, in fact, a second part of a series.
> 
> It's not the *happy* part two I'm sure many wanted.
> 
> But that's what part three is for!!
> 
> ....Maybe. :D


End file.
